Why Don't We Melt Snow?

Factual Questions
1

I grew up in Michigan and Indiana. We had some good snows every year.
Kids, of course, look forward to a foot or two of snow and getting out of school for a while. I know I did.

But, the fact is that a few inches to a few feet can be troublesome for some cities.
People miss work, emergency workers get stuck, and many more problems.

I was just reading that some cities are considering dumping snow into waterways to get it off the streets and sidewalks, even though it would contain enough salt, chemicals, and trash to give the EPA a stroke.

Plows and snowblowers put it over there instead of here. That can only work so long.

Why not melt it? 12 inches of snow is only an inch of rain. Certainly most areas can use the water in the aquifer. It’s going there anyway; why not put it there today instead of March? Damn. Apparently I’m not the firstto think of this…

“What about ice?” you reply? Sure, wet roads can freeze. That’s why you dry them.
Here’s the best part. No unemployment! The gov’t hires every warm body they can find and gives them a case of Brawny or Bounty paper towels, and they follow the melting trucks around and dab up every last drop!

Or perhaps NASCAR, Og help us, already has the answer.

So what’s wrong with having a fleet of monkey-driven jet-powered funny cars blasting down Wacker or Lake Shore Drive?:smiley:

Or, and don’t anyone steal this idea, 'cuz I’m working on the patent, a truck that scoops up snow into a hopper, boils it into steam, and a jet truck following behind to dry things up? Maybe a single unit that does both. Zambonis do it!

And of course we’re going green and powering the the whole system with steam!
(Well, propane or CNG, which are still green!)
Ok, mathletes. Tell me why this won’t work because it’ll take X amount of energy to melt and dry Y amount of snow. Perhaps the same amount of energy in a mid-size neutron star, or all the remaining fossil fuels on earth.

Otherwise I’m buying a septic tank truckand converting it…

2

The amount of energy required to turn tons of snow and ice into steam is not inconsequential.

3

It’ll freeze is one huge issue.

I actually tried this when I was a kid. In the backyard we couldn’t use salt, 'cause of Mr Dog and I got tired of using kitty litter for traction on recently shoveled back yard walkways.

So I decided to melt the snow. It worked OK, but it always seemed to leave a small residue of water that froze up and was more trouble than it was worth.

Now I was just a teen ager so maybe people doing it correctly could work it. I worked on this and I could never melt the snow so that I didn’t wind up with a residue which froze into ice.

And if the temp was above 32ºF (0ºC) I wouldn’t need to melt it as it would melt naturally anyway.

Also remember even if you could do it corrrectly, a rush of water is often as problematic as the snow itself.

4

They do melt snow. The machines to do so are huge, and expensive, and use lots of fuel. Usually they’re used in parking lots and the like, not roads, since you’ve got to park the machine and dump snow into it.

Here’s a video of one in action.

5

Exactly. As it is Ottawa budgets $69 million a year for snow removal.

6

Yes. One inch of rain over frozen ground is more disruptive than 12 inches of snow.

7

Yup, I think last night’s local (Chicago) NBC station said that the airports here were using them as they were out of space to put snow. There was some footage of one being used, as well.

8

It is melted. The sun does it once the temp get’s above freezing. In the meantime, we deal with it.

9

There was a commercial version of a “snow flame-thrower” around when I was young (late 50s/early 60s) and it worked about as well as the version you made. It was marketed to the older folks and commercial businesses with lots of sidewalk to be responsible for. And since some communities then were really cracking down on folks pushing snow into the streets --------- It sounded like a good idea. So you took your inch of snow and turned it into .017 of an inch of sheet ice. Unless you went General Westmoreland on it and ran it until your side walk was dry – in which case you went broke from the fuel (diesel I think or maybe propane) or you cracked you sidewalk from the heating/cooling/heating.

10

Mother Nature already melts snow. It’s called Spring.

11

“Clears stairs (except wood)” :slight_smile:

12

My sister-in-law’s neighbour, who lived on a little hill, once, but only once, tried to melt the snow on his driveway by sprinkling it with water. A first it seemed he was successful but the next morning he found that his car had glided down the hill, across the road and into a garden on the other side.

He had just moved out into the countryside from Paris and was not really used to clearing snow.

13

Just to melt one foot of snow on one acre of parking lot (say) would take about 260 gallons of gasoline. If the ambient temperature is 10 deg C below freezing and you want to make the water end up at 10 deg C above freezing so you can put it where you want it without refreeze, then you’re up to 330 gallons. The process won’t be 100% efficient, so let’s call it an even 400 gallons (which would be a not-too-terrible 83% efficiency.)

400 gallons is a lot of fuel for a piddly 1-acre lot (about 200 ft on a side). Way better just to push the snow aside and wait for Spring.

14

And once you have melted it, where is it going to go? Down the gutter? What if it freezes before getting underground? Then you have an ice dam and a worse problem that can only be solved by sucking up the water immediately after melting. Then you have to keep that above freezing until you can dispose of it…

Seems like an unrewarding use of resources if something else is available, like waiting for Spring.

15

It is also possible to keep your driveway or sidewalk clear by warming to above freezing using buried heating pipes or electrical coils. It’s also expensive but not as much as melting snow.

16

Off work today, watching TV. All the local TV stations are on 24 hour Weather Watch because the predicted snowfall turned into freezing rain. Hey, look at everybody play bumper cars! (Although most places of work & school are closed down.) Precipitation has stopped but a real thaw looks unlikely until tomorrow.

Of course, Houstonians don’t know how to drive in icy conditions. And our many immigrants from chillier climes tend to forget. Just on TV: A dreadful, fatal truck crash; the deceased were from Honduras, where they know even less about cold than we do.

Where people get serious snow, if they melted it, it would just freeze again. Into that nasty ice, instead of pretty, fluffy snow. (Even if my faint memories of South Dakota remind me that it doesn’t stay all that pretty for long.)

17

Seems to me that your concern for a government agency is a bit misplaced. The EPA does its best to ensure that the air you breathe, the water you drink, and the food you eat are sustainable for you to have a long and healthy life. Or is the inconvenience of right here, right now travel so paramount that it must be surmounted at the possible expense for you to have a long and healthy life? Your children’s lives?

18

A few years ago, I worked on an independent WWII movie. We had to film over several weekends. The day before the last weekend, we ended up getting about 5-6 inches of snow, which we had to remove to provide continuity with the rest of the movie. We spent all day Saturday just clearing snow from a field about the size of a football field, the road, and a portion of the field on the other side of the road.

The director had the great idea of getting one of those big propane heater/blowers. It worked great, as long as we were trying to clear a 2-foot by 10-foot path. After about an hour of messing with it, we reverted back to snow shovels, trucks, and tarps.

Absolutely one of the worst days of my life.

19

Yep - as has been pointed out, Chicago did use melters in this recent snow, primarily at O’Hare. But in the past, they’ve also dumped lots of snow into the lake. I haven’t seen any reference to this method during our recent storm, but with this much snow, it’s a worthwhile solution, I think. You can’t just shove 2-3 feet of snow off to the side. There IS no off to the side. Everything is covered. When it comes to concerns about what else gets dumped into the lake, it’s a matter of balance. Sometimes, for the greater good - mainly, of course, safety, but also convenience, commerce, etc. - you make that choice.

20

Using passive solar energy too. Does seem like one of those whacky Southern California ideas though. Seems like a good idea but probably won’t really work in practice.